China now #1 in executions, population… and web surfing!

China is now the most surfing-est country on earth, despite the government's …

The United States is no longer #1 when it comes to warm bodies surfing the Internet. According to BDA China, a Beijing-based consulting and research firm, China has some 228 million surfers. The China Internet Network Information Center puts that figure at 225 million. The US had been in the #1 seat for almost 40 years, dating back to the birth of the Internet in 1969 when it was a Defense Department project.

The AFP headline reads "China outsurfs the US," but whether or not China is truly in the lead is debatable. These studies all use statistics to project the number of people online, and statistics can lie. Simple statistics also don't tell the story of the disparity between the US and China in terms of user experience and innovation. China may have 228 million Internet users, but politics in that region are stifling innovation and the freedom of expression for nearly all of them, and the problem is getting worse, not better.

In the next year some 60 million more Chinese are expected to get online, according to BDA China, but this comes at the same time that the Chinese government is stepping up its crackdown on free expression. President Hu Jintao last year called for purification of the Internet, saying that it was poisoning the minds of China's youth. What he really meant to say is that the government is upset that it cannot completely control the flow of information.

To help keep those youths "honest," China will soon require customers of 'Net cafés to register their names and photos. 53 Internet cafés in Beijing's Xicheng District will be fitted with a new login system this month, and other urban areas will follow suit later this year, using either a centrally controlled monitoring system or, at the very least, enrollment lists with names and pictures.

The Chinese government already applies filters to incoming Internet traffic to ensure that the public isn't exposed to any "backward" thoughts and prohibits citizens from posting content that the government finds inappropriate. Last year, the government stopped just short of requiring all bloggers in the country to register their real names, due to the near-impossible logistics and costs involved.

China has also introduced new laws which make it illegal for the distribution of audio and video content not sanctioned or produced by state-run media agencies.

All of this points to a China that is proceeding cautiously with no small amount of fear. Only a quarter of the country's population is digitally inclined at this time, and China doesn't really want to see that growth stifled. China likes the fact that the Internet can be a great distributor of information; it's just that the government would prefer to control all of that information.

For this reason, the inevitable op-eds about how Mandarin Chinese will become the "lingua Internet" can still be safely ignored (at least if their premise is the percentage of Chinese online). China, by stifling free expression and innovation online, is limiting its ability to influence the globe, opting instead to focus its influence on a catch-22: the proliferation of an open communications medium (the Internet) which the Chinese government would rather function more like a closed, propaganda-oriented platform.

In the meantime, China can bask in its new status as the #1 web surfing country in the world. If it's not true today, it will be by the end of this year. But the climate for innovation there is horrendous, as this recent Forbes article notes, and without anything close to a free Internet, that status as #1 is quite squandered. Yet, as readers in China tell us, savvy users are often one step ahead of the government, and everyone knows that a huge wealth of information and expression lies beyond the Great Firewall. China can't possibly hope to reign in the web, let alone "win the web" as the Forbes article suggests. If anything, the web will win over China, and continue to serve ultimately as a positive force for progressive change in the realms of free speech and civil rights.

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.